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American Association for the History of Medicine

Call for Papers, 1999 Annual Meeting. The 1999 meeting will be held 6–9 May 1999, in New Brunswick, New Jersey. The Chair of the Program Committee is Elizabeth Fee, Ph.D. Any person interested in presenting a paper at this meeting is invited to submit an abstract (one original and six copies) to Dr. Fee, Chief, History of Medicine Division, National Library of Medicine, Building 38, Room 1-E-21, 8600 Rockville Pike, Bethesda, MD 20894.

Any subject in the history of medicine is suitable for presentation, but the paper must represent original work not already published or in press. Presentations are limited to twenty minutes. Because the Bulletin of the History of Medicine is the official journal of the AAHM, the Association encourages speakers to make their manuscripts available for consideration by the Bulletin upon request. Abstracts must be typed single-spaced on one sheet of paper, and must not exceed 300–350 words in length. Abstracts should embody not merely a statement of a research question, but findings and conclusions sufficient to allow assessment by the committee. The following biographical information is also required: Name, title (occupation), preferred mailing address, work and home telephone numbers, present institutional affiliation and academic degrees. Abstracts must be received by 1 October 1998. Please note that abstracts submitted by e-mail or fax will not be accepted.

As in the past, the 1999 program will include lunch-time roundtable workshops and may include poster sessions. Proposals for sessions of three papers may be submitted, but each abstract will be judged and accepted on its own merits. Those wishing to submit abstracts for these sessions should follow the instructions given above.

National and International News

College of Physicians of Philadelphia. “Presidential Disability and the Twenty-Fifth Amendment” was the title of a forum sponsored by the College on 19 November 1997. Speakers included: Bert E. Park, “Certifying Presidential Inability: The Alpha and Omega of the Discovery Process”; Hugh E. Evans, “Current and Future Implications of the Medical History of Franklin D. Roosevelt”; George D. Lundberg, “The Case of John F. Kennedy”; and Herbert L. Abrams, “The Assassination Attempt on President Reagan and the Twenty-Fifth Amendment.”

Lectures at the College during 1998 included: 17 February, “Professional Concern and Patient Care: The Origin of the Intensive Care Unit in Philadelphia,” Julie Fairman; 17 March, “A Biographer’s Nightmare: The Difficult Personality of Sir William Osler,” Michael Bliss (co-sponsored with the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine); and 21 April, “Marie Zakrzewska: Writing the Life of a Nineteenth-Century Physician,” Arleen Tuchman (Kate Hurd Mead Lecture).

For further information, contact Dick Levinson, College of Physicians of Philadelphia, 19 South 22nd Street, Philadelphia, PA 19103-3097.

Columbia University. “The History of Death in America—An NEH Institute” met for four weeks, from 1 June to 26 June 1998. Directed by David Rothman and Sheila Rothman, the Institute aimed to “dispel the myth that America is a ‘death-defying’ culture and to analyze the rich and varied historical record as shaped by time, class, gender, race, region, and ethnicity.” For further information, contact: Eric Sleeper, Program Coordinator, The History of Death in America—An NEH Institute, Center for the Study of Society and Medicine, College of Physicians and Surgeons of Columbia University, 630 West 168th Street, P&S Box 11, New York, NY 10032 (tel.: 212-305-4184; fax: 212-305-6416; e-mail: ccsm@columbia.edu).

Deutsche Gesellschaft für Krankenhausgeschichte. A symposium concerned mainly with the history of hospitals and infirmaries in the Middle Ages and Renaissance will take place on Malta, 4–11 October 1998. For further information, contact: Prof. A. H. Murken, Institut für Geschichte der Medizin und des Krankenhauswesens, Wendlingweg 2, 52074 Aachen, Germany (tel.: 2-41-8-08-80-95; fax: 2-41-8-88-84-66).

European Association for the History of Psychiatry. The secretaries of the Association through the year 1999 are Angela Graf-Nold, Vincent Barras, and Jacques Gasser. They are based at the Institut d’histoire de la médecine, C.P. 196, CH-1000 Lausanne 4, Switzerland (tel.: 41...